A university and a publisher are teaming up to combat paper mills in a unique way: By enlisting a Ph.D. candidate. In April, the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) at Leiden University in the Netherlands announced it would be collaborating with Wiley to establish a four-year research position focused on paper mills. “Of … Continue reading A Ph.D. in paper mills?
The university ethics committee that reviewed a controversial study that deployed AI-generated posts on a Reddit forum made recommendations the researchers did not heed, Retraction Watch has learned. The principal investigator on the study has received a formal warning, and the university’s ethics committees will implement a more rigorous review process for future studies, a … Continue reading AI-Reddit study leader gets warning as ethics committee moves to ‘stricter review process’
The Canadian National Breast Screening Study conducted in the 1980s and led by researchers at the University of Toronto evaluated the efficacy of breast cancer screening in reducing mortality from breast cancer. Because the research was supposedly a “gold standard” randomized controlled trial, its results, published in academic journals and reported in the media, have … Continue reading Guest post: University of Toronto should take action on flawed breast screening study
Scientific Reports has retracted a controversial paper claiming to present evidence an ancient city in the Middle East was destroyed by an exploding celestial body – an event the authors suggested could have inspired the Biblical account of Sodom and Gomorrah. The decision comes two years after Scientific Reports, a Springer Nature title, published an … Continue reading Sodom comet paper to be retracted two years after editor’s note acknowledging concerns
Our list of retracted or withdrawn COVID-19 papers is up past 500. There are more than 58,000 retractions in The Retraction Watch Database — which is now part of Crossref. The Retraction Watch Hijacked Journal Checker now contains more than 300 titles. And have you seen our leaderboard of authors with the most retractions lately … Continue reading Weekend reads: Journals get letters from feds; invasion of the ‘journal snatchers’; should universities release misconduct reports?
Thirty-four medical professional societies have called for The BMJ to retract a recently published guideline recommending against the use of interventional procedures, such as steroid or anaesthetic injections, to treat chronic back pain. The journal published the guideline in February as part of its Rapid Recommendations program alongside a meta-analysis and systematic review of published … Continue reading Medical societies call for BMJ to retract ‘misleading and irresponsible’ guideline
The organization responsible for allocating basic research funding in China has issued misconduct findings against 26 researchers for violations ranging from breach of confidentiality to image manipulation, plagiarism, and buying and selling authorship. The National Natural Science Foundation of China, or NSFC, released the results of 15 misconduct investigations on April 11. Several of the … Continue reading Chinese funding agency sanctions 26 researchers in latest misconduct report
The managing editors and entire editorial board of Mathematical Logic Quarterly, a Wiley title, have resigned, citing “unilateral decisions” by the publisher “that affected the editorial process.” “We do not believe that Wiley is currently providing an environment that allows the editors to do their editorial work according to the standards of the academic community … Continue reading Math journal editors resign to launch open-access title ‘free from pressure or influence’
Longtime Retraction Watch readers know the scientists on our Leaderboard have changed over the years. But one characteristic has remained relatively constant: There are few women on that list – in fact, never rarely more than one at a time. So when a recent paper dove into whether retraction rates vary by the gender of … Continue reading Do men or women retract more? A study found the answer is … complicated
On March 7, a Sage journal published an expression of concern for an article on cases of myocarditis in people who had received a COVID-19 vaccine. “The Editor and the publisher were alerted to potential issues with the research methodology and conclusions and author conflicts of interest” and had undertaken an investigation of the article, … Continue reading COVID-19 vaccine myocarditis paper raises questions about what earns post-publication peer review